Dearies,
Last night, I was pondering the ever-expansive possibilities of work avoidance (the straight dope message board being one). and the option of narcolepsy shot to mind. Presumably, could I claim I was narcoleptic and just take periodic naps? More importantly, is narcolepsy something you have to take someone’s work for or can it be detected in, say, a physical, a CAT scan, an MRI, or the like? Or is it strictly psychological. Wake me when you know.
-Birdmonster
As an addendum, what about insomnia? How is it diagnosed–physically or psychologically? Lastly, for both, are there symptoms other than just the inability or super-human ability to slumber?
Shouldn’t you take sick-leave for the time spent sleeping? If your company doesn’t offer sick leave then down-time, i.e. no pay.
Yes, yes, of course I should. It’s not something I’d really do; only what got me thinking about the conditions in general. You’ve gotta dream about defeating Taylorism sometimes.
You can always get old and retire.
Well, to be perfectly honest, I have narcolepsy and work. It is actually a neurological disorder but I’m not sure about whether or not it shows up on MRIs and such. It is diagnosed using a type of sleep study. It is also treatable with medication (which is not 100% effective, but works.) If it’s bad enough, it does qualify as a disability (and work accomodations can be made based on the ADA) but then you would probably also lose your driver’s license.
Excessive daytime sleepiness is the main symptom, but there are other symptoms as well including cataplexy, hallucinations and sleep paralysis. A good basic information page can be found here.
Luckily I have a fairly mild case and there’s a medication that I can take even with my high blood pressure. But I wouldn’t recommend it as a ‘work-avoidance’ technique.
My wife is narcoleptic, and it is a definite diagnosable condition. There is a regimen of sleep studies while hooked up to a gazillion wires that analyze your sleep/wake, REM, and brain waves involved in the diagnosis. Just being spontaneously sleepy or having trouble with staying awake in meetings isn’t something unique to narcolepsy.
It is also a physical condition, not psychological, usually caused by some damaged whatchahoozits in the hypomumblemumble part of the brain (I’m not a doctor 
), but you can google for the details.
So, short answer, if you are making that claim for work you’d better back it up with an official doctor’s diagnosis.
Again, claiming narcolespsy at work is my goal here, nor is it my goal to make light of the condition. I only started wondering about it yesterday while thinking of how much I thoroughly love my job (sarcasm alert).
You can claim anything you want, the question is what will they believe and accommodate. My experience working as a clean room supervisor for a large corporation was that you had better have paperwork from a physician to back up anything remotely medical in nature and be prepared to answer quite a few questions about how long you have suspected that you had a problem and why personnel wasn’t immediately notified and whether or not your condition represents a safety problem. In other words, if I caught you asleep at the wheel in my clean room, your little narcolepsy song and dance after the fact wouldn’t get you off the hook, even if it were true. Not notifying personnel about a problem such as this would, in itself, be grounds for termination.
I’m blowing it today…above line should read “claiming narcolepsy at work is NOT my goal here.” I can’t even clarify when I’m trying to clarify.
I am a mild narcoleptic as well. The first test they ran on me was a polysomnograph. I got hooked up to the miles of 'trodes before I went to sleep, and someone monitored me all night. That test was used to verify that I wasn’t suffering from Sleep Apnea, Restless Leg Syndrome or many of the other common sleeping disorders. Since I didn’t show any indications of that and verified that I had a normal 8 hours uninterrupted sleep, they left the electrodes on and ran me through an MSLT - a Multiple Sleep Latency Test. Every 2 hours I had to take a maximum 20 minute nap. It was recorded how long it took me to fall asleep (sleep latency) and if I reached REM state during that period. In my case my average sleep latency was around 4 minutes and in 4 out of the 6 naps I took, I reached REM state.
I believe nowadays there is also a genetic test that can be run, but I’m not sure of its accuracy